Noah Feldman, Columnist

Public Impeachment Hearings Will Start With a Bang

William Taylor is an ideal witness for House Democrats to begin with: an honest, unbiased person with detailed recollections.

November 7, 2019 at 6:15 PM UTC

By Noah Feldman

Noah Feldman is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A professor of law at Harvard University, he is author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People."

Witness for the prosecution
Photographer: Olivier Douliery/AFP/Getty Images

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It’s no surprise that Ambassador William Taylor is expected to be the first witness to testify when the House of Representatives opens public impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump next week.

First, he’s an astoundingly credible witness — straight from central casting, as Trump himself likes to say about some of his appointees. As a matter of prosecutorial strategy, that makes him an ideal first witness for House Democrats to lay out their case for the first time to the public.